October 12, 2011, 10:39 AM EDT

By Moses Mozart Dzawu

(Updates with comment from agency in second paragraph, analyst in fourth.)

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Ghana’s economy may expand 13.6 percent this year, as oil output boosts the contribution of industrial production to the gross domestic product.

The provisional estimate, which is based on data for the first nine months of the year, compares with 7.7 percent in 2010, according to a statement handed to reporters by the Ghana Statistical Service. West Africa’s second-biggest economy after Nigeria is valued at 56.3 billion cedis ($34.5 billion) at current prices, the agency said in the statement.

Industry, which includes manufacturing, mining and quarrying and oil, will grow 36 percent in 2011, compared with 5.6 percent in 2010, it said.

The forecast means Ghana may miss the target of 14.4 percent made by the Finance Ministry in a supplementary budget announced in July, said Joe Abbey, an economist at Accra-based Centre for Policy Analysis. The rate is even “a shade higher than what we would have expected, because oil production levels are supposed to be delayed,” Abbey said by phone today.

Output at the Jubilee oil field, which made Ghana the newest oil exporter in Africa, will not reach a production target of 120,000 barrels a day by the end of the year, according to the Finance Ministry.

--Editors: Emily Bowers, Karl Maier.

To contact the reporter on this story: Moses Mozart Dzawu in Accra at mdzawu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-12/ghanaian-economy-to-expand-13-6-this-year-agency-says.html

So?